CIA says it doesn't spy on the Senate

Feinstein said she sent a letter to Brennan, asking for an apology and recognition of wrongdoing, neither of which she has received.

However, Feinstein acknowledged that by taking a copy of the CIA’s internal study, intelligence committee staffers violated an agreement with the CIA not to remove documents without prior clearance from the agency.

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“There was a need to preserve and protect the internal Panetta review in the committee’s own secure spaces,” she argued. “The relocation of the internal Panetta review was lawful and handled in a manner consistent with its classification. No law prevents the relocation of a document in the committee’s possession from a CIA facility to secure committee offices on Capitol Hill.”

The Justice Department has become involved in the issue, Feinstein said, with allegations of criminal action on the part of the CIA and Senate staffers. She said the CIA inspector general has suggested the CIA may have violated the law, and she decried the CIA leader that accused staffers of wrongdoing.

“I have been informed that [CIA Inspector General David] Buckley has referred the matter to the Department of Justice, given the possibility of a criminal violation by CIA personnel,” Feinstein said. On the other hand, she said, “there is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting counsel general’s referral as a potential effort to intimidate this staff and I am not taking it lightly.”

“Appropriate authorities … are looking at what CIA officers, as well as [Senate] staff members, did. I defer to them to determine whether or not there was any violation of law or principles,” Brennan said during his CFR appearance.

Brennan told NBC in an interview just prior to his public remarks that he was not told in advance of Feinstein’s plans to discuss the dispute on the Senate floor. However, in his public statement, the CIA director delivered what sounded like a plea for the Senate to cool the rhetoric.

“I would just encourage members of the Senate to take their time to make sure that they don’t overstate what they claim and what they probably believe to be the truth. These are some complicated matters,” he said.

Feinstein closed by calling for the eventual declassification of the Senate’s more than 6,000-page report on the interrogation program by the White House and its release to the public.

Brennan insisted his agency is not holding up that process, even though it has disagreements with the Senate report.

“We have acknowledged and learned from the program’s shortcomings. … We also owe it to the women and men who faithfully did their duty in executing the program to try to assure that any historic record of it is an accurate and balanced one,” he said in his public remarks.

Feinstein’s speech was quickly hailed by her Democratic colleagues in the Senate, with Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asserting it was one of the most important he’s heard during his nearly 40 years in the Senate and suggesting that the CIA had engaged in “criminal conduct.”

“There’s disagreements as to what the actual facts are,” he said. “What I’m hopeful is that we will have a kind of study done on what happened so that people can find out what the facts are. Right now, we don’t know what the facts are,” he said. “We’re going to continue to deal with this internally within the committee, and we’ll have more to say about it later.

Other Republicans said Feinstein’s charges had certainly grabbed their attention.

“I’m obviously very concerned and interested in following up,” John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on any investigation related to the CIA-Senate clash.